Safe Speed Forums

Folks,

Is there anything that you do that helps to indicate your position in a class system? Any habits or preferences that give the game away?

I’m a class half breed, with a posh father and working class mother. The result has been a lifetime of identity problems, continuing to this day. Having been quite successful in life I used to think I was ‘classless’ or ‘self made’ but that rationalisation is not satisfying me as I get older. So, I’ve been doing some self examination.

Here is one of my give aways. It is where I choose to eat. No fancy restaurants for me, or any place that there are hovering waiters. I choose supermarket cafeterias, truck stops, greasy spoon cafes and of course Mc Donald’s. I don’t go to places that serve wine or that horrible frothy coffee that crops up everywhere these days. I like a place where an overheard conversation is about fixing the plumbing (yourself) and not about long haul ‘alternative’ holidays, Feng Shui or Pilates. I absolutely avoid anywhere that is vegetarian or where they ‘drizzle’ olive oil on little pieces of dry bread. No french fries for me; I eat proper chips and put brown sauce on them, never mayonnaise.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve travelled well, and eaten my way through all kinds of genres, but these days I tend to please myself – and that means a bacon butty on white bread.

So, any offers? What do you do that gives the class game away?

C.

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More rules and regulations please! (Not)

I see inverse-snobbery is alive and well!

Robin,

That felt like a middle class remark.

C.

PS - You raise a good point though. What could a discussion of class be without snobbery? - class is always about snobbery.

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More rules and regulations please! (Not)

Interesting. One of the things that I suppose gives me away as middle class is that I am a vegetarian (lifelong as it happens, but I don't make an issue of it). Other than that, I suppose it's the way I speak and phrase things, dress, look (possibly), my opinions, and probably other things...not that any of it is in any way conscious or deliberate.

Generally the whole thing doesn't bother me at all and I treat everyone the same (or I certainly try to). Conversely I expect people not to judge me on class alone, and I certainly don't feel the need to pretend to be working class if I'm talking to a working class person, or anything like that.

To be honest though, the vast majority of people that I meet (whether at work or not) are white and middle class, and it seems that the same goes for most of them. That just seems to be the way it is.

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Paul Smith: a legend.

"The freedom provided by the motor vehicle is not universally applauded, however: there are those who resent the loss of state control over individual choice that the car represents. Such people rarely admit their prejudices openly; instead, they make false or exaggerated claims about the adverse effects of road transport in order to justify calls for higher taxation or restrictions on mobility." (Conservative Way Forward: Stop The War Against Drivers)

I'm just in a class of my own!

(I don't play well with others)

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Science won over religion when they started installing lightning rods on churches.

Bombus,

Sounds like you know where you are. You are dead right about the 'conscious or deliberate' thing though. I bet most of us don't know our own class signals, or don't think about it.

I too am very interested in being what we are and not pretending to be something else. Since retiring (college lecturing) I have drifted away from that scene quite gradually, and find that I make easier choices now.

To my surprise I discover that I had adopted all kinds of trendy pretentions around the college set, which have just drifted away in retirement. I met an old colleague the other day and was amazed at how much I have changed.

It feels kind of Zen.

C.

PS - The pretensions were things about living in certain precise areas of the city, going to certain pubs, music, film, a whole lifestyle thing. It was very doctrinaire. Maybe I was just too impressionable? I mean, I never really liked humus, so why did I eat so much of it?

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More rules and regulations please! (Not)

The best types are the white middle class who for some reason aspire to be working class and will insist they are in fact working class.

Amusingly you could also now describe the working class as the non-working class, cos the old working class now relies on welfare. A whole new class! (I call them thieving scum cos I'm middle class)

I don't really understand "class". Why would anyone want to describe themselves as middle, upper, or working class? What benefit does it bring?

Taking Cooler's example above, I don't have a preference for so called "posh" restaurants than "greasy spoons". I've had some fantastic food in restaurants with wipe-clean tablecloths (I'm thinking Brick Lane in particular) and some rotten service in black-tie places. I've shopped in low-rent department stores with snooty staff and I've been made to feel like a king in Knightbridge, even though I spent more in the former than the latter.

I've talked at great length with friends and colleagues about long haul holidays AND mending plumbing. Sometimes the same colleagues. Sometimes even in the same evening.

Does it come down to thinking that some people are "better" or "worse" than I am? I don't think that, I can't imagine it. They may be better off, or have a smaller house, or a better car, or different tastes, or more or less qualifications, but none of these things make person X "better" or "worse" than person Y.

I've always found the concept of class a confusing one.

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COAST Not just somewhere to keep a beach.

A young loner on a crusade to champion the cause of the innocent, the helpless, the powerless, in a world of criminals who operate above the law.

mmltonge,

Hmm, that's a D2 view.

C.

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More rules and regulations please! (Not)

I know my place.

(Acknowledgements to Cleese, Barker and Corbett)

I take the Daily Mail.

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Malcolm W.
The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not represent the views of Safespeed.

I don't see myself as being in any sort of class, I'm just me.

By contrast, the Technical Director at work (Ian Lake) is without doubt one middle class, stuck up c**t who thinks that anybody below him in the company hierarchy is on the same rung of the evolutionary ladder as dog sh*t and occasionally makes the mistake of treating us as such (it really is a shame that gratuitous violence in the workplace is an instant sacking offence).

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What makes you think I'm drunk officer, have I got a fat bird with me?

not quite certain what you mean with D2, but are you referring to demographic classifications here (A1, B2 etc)?

Demographics are not the same as "class", AIUI

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COAST Not just somewhere to keep a beach.

A young loner on a crusade to champion the cause of the innocent, the helpless, the powerless, in a world of criminals who operate above the law.

Handy,

Of course it's better for our personal psychology to transcend these distinctions. However, many people do not and that is interesting.

Maybe my provincial city is a bit 'cliquy', for I could wager on what types will be seen where and I would never lose money. Of course in London this would be less marked, but I think the parish's are still there.

In my area, if I don't want to see a 'woolly jumper' I know exactly where to go. I could even bet on the flight checkins at the airport!

C.

PS - I had a meal in Covent Garden (sit down) for £1.99.

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More rules and regulations please! (Not)

handy,

Thanks for putting me right on that one.

C.

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More rules and regulations please! (Not)

Gixxer,

Well done you. It's refreshing to hear the truth properly expressed sometimes. There is too much pussyfooting around this nasty topic IMHO.

Good post!

C.

Maybe you shouldn't have mentioned his actual name?

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More rules and regulations please! (Not)

Malcolm,

My wife reads that. She says she likes it because she has an opposite view on every article, at least that's what she tells me.

Yep, newspapers are an indicator of the question in the OP.

C.

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More rules and regulations please! (Not)

He did better than that and linked to a site with a picture

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Driving fast is for a particular time and place, I can do it I just only do it occasionally because I am a gentleman.
- James May

Hmm. No comment.

C.

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More rules and regulations please! (Not)

Like what handy said really, I love a fine meal in a good restaraunt but like to drink in down to earth pubs.

I'm an electrician, dad was a plumber, but although thats through-and-through working class I also run my own biz, probably earn more than plenty of so called middle classes and more importantly, find many people hold me in high esteem for doing so. Others in positions of insignificant relevance look down on me in my blue overalls.

They say the class system is no more, and to an extent they're right, I think snobbery still exists though. I think I'm with monty python, "I'm working class, and I look up to no-one." really, I've never really grasped snobbery, I don't care if you're a barrister or a binman, they're both jobs I really wouldn't want to do so I'm glad people exist who do

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Fear is a weapon of mass distraction

It was meant as a joke (the bit about thieving scum - I do think a whole new class has been created)