The cycle chat guide to being middle class

[Pro Tour Punditry]

My meaning was that "success", however you want to define it is possible for anyone if you work hard and offer some skills. Not being middle class (whatever that actually is) does not preclude one from success in any field.

So, you don't know what success looks like.
And you don't know what middle class is.
Nor can we really define "hard work"

But we can achieve the former by applying the latter...

 

[Flick of the Elbow]

Perhaps it's a "If you have to ask, you're not" sort of thing ?

 

[swee'pea99]

Perhaps it's a "If you have to ask, you're not" sort of thing ?

'If one has to ask', please.

 

[Grant Fondo]

Oh do stop arguing you underlings

 

[Julia9054]

However, my view is that if someone is not born, brought up and educated in a middle class environment, no matter how hard they may try they will never attain the middle class ethos, whatever that is. I'm a typical example. I had a working class upbringing and I've done OK career-wise but I will never be middle class, despite maybe having the physical trappings of a middle class lifestyle (birkestocks excepted)

Class is a mixture of your level of education, what you do for a living, how much money/financial security you have and your upbringing. The order of importance in which you place those four things will determine how you self identify. If you identify as working class but everyone else looking at you from the outside would view you as middle class, which are you? Are your children middle class?
I am well educated, a teacher, financially ok and with a working class upbringing. I class myself as middle class. I suspect most people on meeting me would agree.
Which it is why it is all a nonsense!

 

[nickyboy]

Class is a mixture of your level of education, what you do for a living, how much money/financial security you have and your upbringing. The order of importance in which you place those four things will determine how you self identify. If you identify as working class but everyone else looking at you from the outside would view you as middle class, which are you? Are your children middle class?
I am well educated, a teacher, financially ok and with a working class upbringing. I class myself as middle class. I suspect most people on meeting me would agree.
Which it is why it is all a nonsense!

Mrs N has just told me that we shall be dining on ham, egg and chips tonight. My initial thought was "that couldn't be bettered". So I guess I'm still firmly in the working class camp. And the ham most definitely ain't acorn-fed Iberico

Kids are more middle class than me for sure, they don't salivate at the prospect of tonight's tea (see what I did there) in the way I do

 

[Dave 123]

Mrs N has just told me that we shall be dining on ham, egg and chips tonight. My initial thought was "that couldn't be bettered". So I guess I'm still firmly in the working class camp. And the ham most definitely ain't acorn-fed Iberico

Kids are more middle class than me for sure, they don't salivate at the prospect of tonight's tea (see what I did there) in the way I do

Surely it's dinnah or if you're even more wanky ....... sappah?

 

[Flick of the Elbow]

Now that I've firmly given up on any aspirations of becoming middle class I've discovered that actually I'm very comfortable with being working class. I've always been working class, I just hadn't realised it. (I'd always kidded myself that I was some sort of lower middle class, but I now view that as an oxymoron).

 

[swee'pea99]

(I'd always kidded myself that I was some sort of lower middle class, but I now view that as an oxymoron).

Lower middle class is not an oxymoron. Furthermore, oxymoron is not a working class word. You're bourgeois. Live with it.

 

[Flick of the Elbow]

Lower middle class is not an oxymoron. Furthermore, oxymoron is not a working class word. You're bourgeois. Live with it.

I can't be bourgeois, I'm about to have my tea.

 

[srw]

guess I'm still firmly in the working class camp

No, it means you like ham, egg and chips. As it happens the last time I went to the pub for a meal I had ham, egg and chips because the burger I fancied wasn't available and because I like ham, egg and chips. That doesn't stop me acknowledging that by most traditional yardsticks I'm very much middle class.

 

[nickyboy]

I can't be bourgeois, I'm about to have my tea.

I think you will find it's "w'tea"

 

[srw]

What is interesting is that in my career I meet quite a few very wealthy people who have come from working class backgrounds. Over a beer, they will confide in me (because I have a similar background) that they feel they don't "belong" when we are meeting lawyers, accountants etc and that at some time, someone will tap them on the shoulder and say "back where you came from sunshine"

I'll let you into a little secret. There are plenty of successful people who come from all sorts of backgrounds who feel exactly the same. Those lawyers, accountants etc, not excluded.

 

[Drago]

Middle class. How dreadfully passé.

 

[Gravity Aided]

There's no doubt I am middle class. Ford Fusion, you see.

Fiat-Chrysler 200c for mine .And the beat up old Mitsubishi Lancer, which I get to drive.