Question What class do you consider yourself?

[steveo]

Interesting. My own background ticks many of the same boxes as Shrimpero and Firestorm.
Yet I would find it ridiculous to call myself working class.
Maybe what one person calls working class someone else calls middle class and vice versa?

Surely if you need to work you are working class. I consider myself working class, because of this reason.
If I could afford to retire very early then maybe middle class, and if i had been born into money and never worked, then probably upper class. Royalty is obviously out and peasantry? uuurggh, no thanks.

 

[canveyshrimper]

Surely if you need to work you are working class. I consider myself working class, because of this reason.
If I could afford to retire very early then maybe middle class, and if i had been born into money and never worked, then probably upper class. Royalty is obviously out and peasantry? uuurggh, no thanks.

Club Bongo is a denizen of Middlesbrough where if you've sot a fiver in your pocket you're a toff.

 

[Reg Martin]

Club Bongo is a denizen of Middlesbrough where if you've sot a fiver in your pocket you're a toff.

:D
I think you may have hit the nail on the head there. Defintions like middle class, working class, etc don't make much sense up here. The Channel Four programme Shameless is a scarily true reflection of many housing estates round here.

 

[canveyshrimper]

:D
I think you may have hit the nail on the head there. Defintions like middle class, working class, etc don't make much sense up here. The Channel Four programme Shameless is a scarily true reflection of many housing estates round here.

I think that's true of many estates not only in the North but throughout the country.

 

[Reg Martin]

I think that's true of many estates not only in the North but throughout the country.

And after 13 years of Labour rule.
Whether Cons/LibDems can do any better in improving those areas that genuinely fit the description 'broken Britain' remains to be seen but it will be very hard for them to do any worse.

 

[Yorkshire Blue]

Classless;)

 

[overseas shrimper]

Background and upbringing is often used as 'code' for how much money soemone's parents earned when they were growing up so I think salary is a factor.

In which case I cannot vote as there isn't an option below 'Peasantry' seeing as my mother worked for some time with limited ambition and my dad shamefully sponged off the DHSS as a career.

 

[OldBlueLady]

When were you at WHSB?

Rob's the year above me, so his Westcliff era would have been 72-79.

 

[Firestorm]

Interesting. My own background ticks many of the same boxes as Shrimpero and Firestorm.
Yet I would find it ridiculous to call myself working class.
Maybe what one person calls working class someone else calls middle class and vice versa?

Comprehensive education or Grammar ?

Although Basildon DC had abolished the 11 plus at the tail end of the 60's and had no Grammar schools in the area there was still the opportunity to sit the exams privately and then go to the Grammar schools in Brentwood or Chelmsford if successful, IIRC my parents were against it primarily because we would have struggled to find the exam fees and the daily fares to the schools.

My grandad was an icon to me and he was , as i have said before, a train driver, a real working class union man. Maybe my insistence of being working class (despite owning a house in Thorpe Bay and working in the city) is about betraying him ?

 

[Reg Martin]

Comprehensive education or Grammar ?

Although Basildon DC had abolished the 11 plus at the tail end of the 60's and had no Grammar schools in the area there was still the opportunity to sit the exams privately and then go to the Grammar schools in Brentwood or Chelmsford if successful, IIRC my parents were against it primarily because we would have struggled to find the exam fees and the daily fares to the schools.

My grandad was an icon to me and he was , as i have said before, a train driver, a real working class union man. Maybe my insistence of being working class (despite owning a house in Thorpe Bay and working in the city) is about betraying him ?

WHSB so grammar like Shrimpero
My grandfathers were a factory worker and chauffeur respectively so I suppose I could claim working class roots though so could most of the population. Though neither of my parents came from wealthy backgrounds my father had a white collar job and worked his way up from a very junior level to a fairly senior level. Like Neil Kinnock I was the first, and in my case still the only, person in may family to have gone to Uni.
It's probably a combination of my father's success and my Uni education that makes me feel it would be daft to make any claim on my grandparents class.

 

[Firestorm]

Like Neil Kinnock I was the first, and in my case still the only, person in may family to have gone to Uni.
It's probably a combination of my father's success and my Uni education that makes me feel it would be daft to make any claim on my grandparents class.

I was the also the first in my family to go to UNI, my son was the 2nd, we are , however, still waiting for the first family graduate.....

 

[number11]

Comprehensive education or Grammar ?



My grandad was an icon to me and he was , as i have said before, a train driver, a real working class union man. Maybe my insistence of being working class (despite owning a house in Thorpe Bay and working in the city) is about betraying him ?

I guess the difficulty is that there is no clear definition of what is middle and working classes. I'm sure dredging back to my A level days there is some other classification from A-E dealing with what is classed as 'Upper Class' through to educated workers, manual workers and benefits class......which probably fits our society better.

There is something virtuous about the ideals and efforts of our grandparents generation when there wasn't as much of a 'middle class', but I don't understand why people are almost ashamed of being 'middle class' and why that in someone seems less virtuous.

I would have thought if you had an independent 'reasonable man' observer assess the posters of shrimperzone, most of us would be viewed as middle class (Even by virtue of fact most of us are at work and can post on here during the day indicating an office job!). Equally I would imagine a vast majority of our grandparents would be viewed as working class. Our parents generation slightly more transient.

 

[Tangled up in Blue]

Rob's the year above me, so his Westcliff era would have been 72-79.

That sounds about right.The old chap's 50 this year in November.:)

 

[MK Shrimper]

most of us would be viewed as middle class (Even by virtue of fact most of us are at work and can post on here during the day indicating an office job!). Equally I would imagine a vast majority of our grandparents would be viewed as working class. Our parents generation slightly more transient.

Agree with the last statement, however not the first. There's plenty of data entry clerks in NR who earn peanuts (I reckon less than £15K) and plenty of supervisors on track who earn upwards of £40K + O/T.

And the supervisors are generally as right-wing working class as they get: The Sun, greasy fry ups in the morning, drinking to excess on a Friday night.

 

[Rob Noxious]

When were you at WHSB?

Rob's the year above me, so his Westcliff era would have been 72-79.

That sounds about right.The old chap's 50 this year in November.

Sorry for my delayed reply, Club Bongo. However, it appears my support team have told you all you need to know and more.

 

[Tangled up in Blue]

Sorry for my delayed reply, Club Bongo. However, it appears my support team have told you all you need to know and more.

Glad to help out.;)

 

[Berrichonne shrimper]

barna and shrimpeo are the chuckle brothers and i claim my 5 groats because im a peasent or was it present,wheres osy when u need him.

 

[* ORM *]

Working class roots, middle class lifestyle, working class brain.

 

[Ron Manager]

Working class roots, middle class lifestyle, working class brain.

Perfect, sums it up in 9 words

 

[Reg Martin]

Sorry for my delayed reply, Club Bongo. However, it appears my support team have told you all you need to know and more.

I was there 74-81 so our time there overlapped though our paths probably never crossed