Choose Your Words Carefully: 9 (in Quotes)

People like to say that class is no more, and regional dialects have disappeared.

My husband and I have raised our kids to be pretty precise about grammar, because both of us grew up in poverty, and our studies helped us become much more financially stable as adults than we ever were as children. We especially stress the difference between good and well, number and amount, I and me, etc. (slate.com. Presumably they don’t like: “How’s X?” “Oh, he’s doing good.” These are clearly class markers.)

We weren’t allowed to say “shut up”, “what?” or “yeah” (always “pardon” and “yes”), or to shout to each other from another room. (Via Twitter)

We used to house-sit in the 70s for a classical pianist, and my mother’s voice went up several levels of gentility whenever she answered their phone. (Via Twitter)

My mum and grandma used to put on a sort of Hyacinth Bucket telephone voice. (@BardneyBoy)

My first wife's mother – at home, Looe variety Cornish accepted. Speaking to anyone she considered 'posh', she tried to speak posh herself – still Cornish but a bit higher pitch. (KD)

My wife speaks with great circumspection—'proper pride,' she calls it—to our neighbour the tradesman's lady. (WM Thackeray, The Book of Snobs)

I watched and listened to Jacob Rees-Mogg yesterday. He may be an arrogant anachronism, but you have to admire his eloquence and command of the English language. I thoroughly enjoyed listening to him. It is a pity that more do not talk like him. (Via Facebook)

The expression 'y'all' is among the most revolting, cursed things I've ever heard. Why are Americans so relentlessly, unwaveringly vulgar? (@CapelLofft)

'Y'all' is horrible, but I feel just as irritated when British people say "We were sat..." instead of "We were sitting." (@Lord_Steerforth)

When I lived in England, my mother used to tell me that I needed to put my Tennessee accent back on when I was coming home for a visit... When I left Oak Ridge, I started developing a distinctly Southern accent. My dear mother equated Southern regional accents with lack of class and education. She really was quite the social climber. She was raised in poverty, in rural Texas, and wanted better for her children. (MKI)

I was hoping changing your accent had been dumped. When I was a very young woman I was turned down for a job because I 'didn't speak well enough'. I think it was one of the first times I'd encountered snobbery. Never forgotten it – never lost my accent! (@Kibalchich1)

The requirement for ‘a pleasant speaking voice’ ensured that only higher-class girls with flawless Received Pronunciation would apply. (Sarah Shaw, Short Skirts and Shorthand. It was sometimes called “a good telephone manner”. She also points out that the girls who became Personal Assistants were slim and pretty, with straight blonde hair, blue eyes and button noses.)

Dear Dr Katie Edwards
Subject: Yorkshire dialect
I’ve just listened to your programme on Radio 4. My feedback is that I was sure the BBC wouldn’t impose their diversity agenda on the listener. You’ve been chosen because of the way you speak and you’ve obviously done well for yourself despite your evidently difficult background. Good for you! While you have my admiration for making something of yourself, I want to hear a presenter who speaks correctly. From time to time we are treated to a broadcaster with a ridiculous sounding regional accent and if the rest of the listeners are anything like me, then it’s an unwelcome addition to the programming. I’m astonished that you continue to speak with such a strong accent and use dialect, after Genesis 11, 1-9. Congratulations on your (I’m sure very many) achievements but you do not belong on Radio 4. (The Biblical reference is to the Tower of Babel.)


Kimberley Chambers appeared on BBC Breakfast in 2019 to plug her new thriller, The Sting. Twitter responded: Who on earth was that Cockney women on BBC Breakfast this morning. Couldn't bear to listen to her, had to turn the TV off! Poor Charlie and Naga. (@darryljb75) This book will be interesting reading if written the same as she speaks. (@mazarati33) Oh look, a plastic Cockney. (@marti6118) Can we please have subtitles from the BBC with regard to this Cockney? It’s like hearing the entire cast of Eastenders on steroids! (@IanBrownuk)

(And then the BBC broadcasts a radio programme claiming that the Cockney accent has disappeared. I'm sure the two incidents are not related.)

More recently, some have complained about people who say "communi'y". Is the northern "commewniteh" any better - or worse?

I really like Jess Phillips but I genuinely think (and I say this as a proud West Midlander) that her Brummie accent will put people off. The prejudice against certain accents is horrendous. (Via FB.)


In 2020, The Guardian ran a piece on students having their accents mocked at university:

It sounds ridiculous, but I only realised I had what people regarded as a strong regional accent when I began my undergraduate studies. Mocking of my accent was immediate.

A constant barrage of abuse from students and staff who were verbally disapproving of my mild but noticeable Black Country accent... Staff on more than one occasion said ‘we don’t normally get your type here’ or ‘perhaps you could try and fit in’... “I am gay and if anyone makes homophobic remarks towards me it is considered illegal, but if someone is classist I can’t say anything because it is not a protected characteristic – yet it is still abuse.”

“‘You’ll never get anywhere talking like that, it makes you sound stupid. You need to try and flatten your Yorkshire accent.’ That was a member of staff in my third year of university. [She was told:] When you use “like” in sentences, you sound like a teenager. My accent completely changed during my four years at university, flattening back immediately when I was welcomed home.

One girl from Tyneside went to Durham – but was the only student there with a northern accent.

Since moving down south a month ago I can think of at least 10 occasions when my accent, being a relatively strong one from Birmingham, has been brought up and mocked in conversation.” (She was told she ought speak more “eloquently”.)

I’ve had people make assumptions about my intelligence, family background and financial situation based on nothing but the way I speak.

Horticultural snobs frequently correct other people’s Latin pronunciation as a weird power move. (James Wong) He says he was turned down by a newspaper for not being “British” enough. They wanted someone “less international”. Someone responded: You have THE most British of accents and talk more posh (sorry that sounds snobby) than most people I know.

I don’t sound the same as the rest of my family and it often makes me feel sad. But also makes me feel like a bit of a fraud. Like, over time I’ve subconsciously lost the ‘heavy’ parts of my Chester accent. (@RebeccaRideal)

I'm Scouse. How do you think I'm treated? 1. We are only 'acceptable' if we are famous. Otherwise, the only way I'm welcome at a table is if I'm holding a tray. 2. People think its OK to do our accent back to us, repeating what we have just said. 3. People think it's OK to do stereotypical jokes. 4. The look of surprise when someone with a Liverpudlian accent and a boxer's nose can talk about Byzantine icons and Constructivism. (@ChrisFarrelly)

My mum was always telling me off for sounding ‘Too Cardiff’. She was Cardiff born and bred. (@villi63)

I had a fairly standard Cheshire accent when I started uni darn sarf, and somehow managed to collect an entire circle of friends who were from the Midlands or North. And we did get mocked for our accents by the posh southerners! (@ThorhallaBjorg)

Several people from Dublin have pointed out that Moriarty does have a Dublin accent but it is an exaggerated middle-class south Dublin accent. It is locally known as the “D4 accent” after a postcode in south Dublin... Where I grew up anyone who didn’t have a regional accent was “posh”. After coming to University in the South, I have realised that BBC pronunciation is not considered “posh” but “standard”. Posh was defined as the rather over-exaggerated accent people often use to pantomime the rich. (Blogger welllingtongoose, wellingtongoose.livejournal.com)

I've taught in Essex, Norfolk, Yorkshire and Cornwall. Children are dead proud of their accents and their dialect words. But they also know they have to "posh" themselves up if they want to get on. So sad. (@owen_jermy)

My family always said I spoke posher than them but going to university I realised I really didn’t speak posh. (Via Twitter)

I thought I’d poshed up my accent when I went to Cambridge. But then I joined the FT, and I realised that I really hadn’t. (Beth Rigby, political editor at Sky News)

I grew up poor with a very distinctive working-class accent. In England in the 1980s and 1990s, this would have impeded my professional advancement. (Former National Security Council official Fiona Hill)

I'm lucky enough to have a pretty soft Yorkshire accent and still get some judgement. My wife, whose accent is much stronger, is more readily written off at times and it's annoying. (@DrRichFG)

I was born and raised on benefits and from a housing estate. I was told by my PhD supervisor to "speak properly" just before presenting at my first international conference. Years later I'm so glad I've never lost my thick Derry accent! (@KitanaValentine)

One of those strange 1960s pop English voices that you don’t hear any more, like the guy out of the Monkees, or Cliff Richard in Summer Holiday. (Hugo Rifkind, Times 2020. Davy Jones of the Monkees came from Manchester, but when he moved to the States he was given an American’s idea of Cockney. Judy Carne from Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In, and Geraldine Chaplin in Nashville also adopted the accent.)

“The industry is still hugely dominated by class,” says actor James McArdle. He said he heard complaints in the industry about difficulty in understanding Scottish accents “all the time”. (Scotsman.com. A reviewer recently talked about “whining Scottish accents”.)

Scots face insidious racism in the West End. (Alan Cumming)

Class is profitably marketed online by creepy coaching companies offering “diction, charm and social grace”. (Libby Purves in the Times)


But is it really such an advantage to talk like Jacob Rees-Mogg?

Radio 4 – I hate that poetry-reading middle-class voice they put on. (@sufiboy)

People assuming I grew up rich with upper-class parents because I know some long words and occasionally sound close to articulate in videos is a form of classism. That’s my TED talk. (@shaun_vids)

I feel for you, Shaun. And someone else adds that RP "just simpers".

More here, and links to the rest.

Class is Dead, Long Live Class: Definitions

Posh: To some, "posh" people went to a private school, however cheap and obscure. Their parents were teachers and business-people, rather than cleaners and lorry-drivers. But really posh people are aristocrats, who have old money, inherited land and stately homes. The category includes rich families who have always been friends of aristocrats.

Aristocrat: In the US, it means well-off people who run the country. In the UK, it means people with a hereditary title who own large houses on country estates. (The Antiques Road Trip recently used “aristocracy” to mean “haute bourgeoisie” – the kind of people who went to the opera in the 19th century.)

Upper class: To tabloid (red-top) readers in the UK, it means upper middle class. They lump us with aristos, not caring about the vast disparity of wealth, power and land ownership.

Middle class: In the US, it means working people who are doing OK at blue-collar jobs. In the UK, it means a snobbish elite obsessed with "clean eating" and being "woke".

George Orwell called himself a “striving exam-passer” – he was middle-middle-class, and had to pass exams because he couldn’t rely on powerful friends pulling strings to get him a job.

According to the National Readership Survey, the upper middles (Social Class A) are vastly outnumbered by the middle (Bs) and lower middles (C2s), and the aristos don’t even feature (despite owning half of Yorkshire). And the As, Bs and C1s are outnumbered almost two-to-one by the C2s, Ds and Es (skilled workers, unskilled workers and workless). No wonder the chaterati were so upset by the death of Diana, Princess of Wales: huge crowds appeared from nowhere, took over London, cried openly, tied teddy bears to trees, applauded Earl Spencer's address, laid a carpet of flowers in front of Kensington Palace, and then quietly disappeared again. The upper middles are still trying to forget that all these other people share the country with them. (What to say about Diana's funeral: "Of course I was sad, but I wasn't hysterical.")

I see the "exactly what is middle class" discussion is spreading! The Americans are right of course. The old British definition is silly. (@grodaeu)

I think the confusion is that in recent years we've accepted the American definition of middle class, i.e. everyone who isn't dirt poor, whereas the Telegraph still uses the traditional English definition, which is basically anyone who is rich but not traditional aristocracy. (@AndrejNkv)

In the early 90s, Louise Mensch claimed to be “upper-class, not middle”. Her father was a lawyer and her mother the headmistress of a prep school. Upper middle, I think, Louise.

It's confusing that the Guardian, among other publications, uses “middle class” to mean “upper middle class”. No wonder people think that anyone who “talks posh” must be enormously rich and privileged.

@mckellogs in the US wonders what working class people think of as “middle class”? She lists:

Gets desserts at restaurants
Has a specific hairdresser
Real butter
Fresh picked flowers
Lots of bed pillows

Dad’s parents were Scouse/Welsh/Irish – a miner and a former housemaid. Mum’s parents, on the other hand, were teachers, from Cambridge – and, therefore, posh: Gran had been to Egypt on holiday and wore berets. (Caitlin Moran, Times 2015)

In the past 50 years, the upper-middles have been forced to copy the lower-middles, and pass exams to get into university, get a job – though patronage and the Old Boy network still operates in the UK. An old schoolfriend agreed that when we were young nobody talked about careers, and besides there was a boom and any fool could get a job. If you were sacked there was always another job you could walk into. But then times changed swiftly – probably with the oil crisis and the end of the Summer of Love.

The Times in 2015 wrote a piece headlined: "Sloanes lose their place in society to the polite new Middleton class". The magazine Town and County started the rumour. Called after the family of the Duchess of Cambridge, the "Upper Middletons" have "neither vast wealth nor lineage". Instead they they value "close family relationships, loyalty, reliability and niceness". They send their children to co-ed boarding secondary schools like "Bradfield, Millfield or Marlborough". Says Town and Country: “Their children are perfectly turned out, polite and, dare we say it, slightly boring. They have nice manners, are popular, attend school parties with perfectly wrapped gifts and get decent grades.” The Upper Middletons live "in Battersea, Putney and Richmond" or “underwhelming” counties like Buckinghamshire, Berkshire and Hertfordshire. They run "small businesses that can keep them close to home". "They prefer skiing and tennis to riding and hunting... they disdain bling and anything nouveau riche."  You can recognise them by their "high-street taste", white jeans and "nude" coloured shoes. Meow!

More here, and links to the rest.

Zoom Etiquette

How not to Zoom

Technology enters our lives, and etiquette lags behind. We're all Zooming now, and we need to observe certain conventions.

"I don't want to Zoom – I just can't be bothered." This translates as "I think the technology will be too daunting. In fact I don't even know how to start."

You can download Zoom from the internet – Google "Zoom download" and follow the instructions. It takes a few minutes.

If someone has emailed you a Zoom link, click on it and Zoom will install itself and take you to the meeting (if you don't already have Zoom installed).

You can use Zoom on a computer (PC or Mac), laptop, tablet or phone. You can even join meetings through a landline, though you won't be able to see anybody.

SO, YOU'VE JOINED A ZOOM MEETING

Look at the edges of the screen for controls. Video and audio bottom left, gallery view top right, Leave Meeting bottom right. Chat and Share Screen bottom centre. If you can't see the controls, pass your mouse over the borders. Try top right - you'll find the very useful "Exit full screen".

You can increase or reduce the volume through the controls on the top row of your keyboard. Look for the megaphone symbol.

You can increase your own volume by clicking on audio (bottom left) and following instructions. You'll be asked to test your own microphone – it may be turned down very low. Or too high! (Shouting seems to cause "crackle".)

Look for your own image – is it flattering? Is it showing your best profile? Is it showing only the top of your head? While looking at your image, adjust the angle of your laptop screen accordingly. It helps to rest your laptop on a pile of books or monitor stand so that you are looking directly at the screen. It also helps to prop up your tablet rather than resting it on the table. If you put the tablet on a horizontal surface, you can still see everybody's face, but they can only see your ceiling. And if you're looking down at us, we're looking up at you – or more usually a close-up of your double-chin or earlobe.

If you're holding your phone in your hand, it's hard not to wave it around – which means that your image wobbles around distractingly.

Make sure the light is falling on your face – don't sit with your back to a window.

Remember that you can be seen!

VISION ON, SOUND ON
"I'm tired of Zoom meetings where everybody talks at once and interrupts each other." Translation: "My group hasn't discovered the mute function."

If two people talk at once on Zoom, the technology can't decide which is the "main speaker", so you just get bits of both and can't hear either person.

Once you've all said hi and introduced yourselves, the Admin needs to MUTE YOU ALL. If you want to speak, wave and the admin will unmute you. (You can also mute and unmute yourself. Look at the microphone symbol — does it have a red line through it? You're muted. Click on the three dots on your image and you'll see options to mute or unmute.)

You can always type side-conversations in Chat (see the bottom of the screen).

If you're unmuted, remember that the rest of the group can hear EVERY SOUND YOU MAKE. Sounds near the mike are amplified: it can pick up chewing or even breathing. If you're unmuted, you'll disturb the sound for the main speaker even if you say nothing.

If you decide to adjust the position of your laptop or tablet, please mute yourself. Again, you may not hear much but we can hear loud crashing sounds as you place your device. Position your device before the meeting starts.

If you're wearing headphones and a microphone, please keep still (or mute yourself when not speaking). Your movements can make loud sounds at our end. If you're using phone earbuds with a tiny microphone attached to the wire, make sure the mike isn't muffled against your clothes. Keep the "live" side facing outwards.

Please don't leave your mike on and wander off and have a conversation with someone else at home - we can hear you mumbling.

And conversations in the background are much louder to us than they are to you. You may be able to filter out the chat - we can't.

Remember that you can be heard!

SINGING ALONG
A group singing or speaking together on Zoom can result in cacophony – this is because some people are on a slight delay, due to internet speeds. If you're the leader, don't slow down, just keep going.

Zoom seems to pick out the loudest person and decide they are the leader. It then fades down the actual leader, making it harder to follow them – and they stay quiet for a few seconds afterwards. One solution is to select Original Sound in Audio Settings.

The better the device and broadband, the better the sound.

If people complain they can't hear you, adjust your volume or get an external microphone – they don't cost much. You might as well make life easier for your colleagues – this is the new normal, and it will be with us for some time.

Q I can’t see the zoom screen and my email.

A Top right of the Zoom screen click on the word View and Exit Full Screen. Resize your windows by grabbing a corner or side and using the mouse.

As with all manners, it's about consideration for others!

Footnote: When we started doing religious services via Zoom, we spent some time discussing how we would communicate with each other. How to replace real-life whispering, looks, nods etc? In the end we concluded we just had to talk to each other. Even so, I spent a whole service with my volume turned up too high and nobody told me.

More here, and links to the rest.

Classy Quotes 24

Raine Spencer

If I had more time, I'd write something on all the different ways that politicians try to rephrase what is essentially 'lower middle class'. (Charlotte L. Riley ‏@lottelydia 16 Nov 2016)

Their gifts were merely so many bribes, sent with a purpose which was easy enough to fathom. The donors wished to be invited to the wedding in the first place — after that, they sought to be included in our visiting-list, and foresaw invitations to our dinners and house-parties — and more than this, they calculated on our influence in society. (Marie Corelli, Sorrows of Satan)

“Because of her background it was easy to underestimate Raine Spencer”, who foiled a plan to raze Covent Garden and replace it with motorways and tower blocks. (What was her prejudicial background? She was married to an Earl.)

[Working-class writer Colin Wilson] fell for Joy immediately, partly because he was impressed with her middle-class background: ‘When I heard Joy, I thought, “Oh marvellous, that’s what I want.”
(Beautiful Idiots and Brilliant Lunatics: A Sideways Look at Twentieth-Century London, Rob Baker)

I know misery does exist, but we don’t want it in our drawing rooms. (Raine Spencer But thanks for saving Covent Garden, Raine.)

‘What did your mater mean when she asked who I was? She got my name right.’ ‘You’re not supposed to ask that sort of question,’ said Hendon, then relented. ‘She meant who was your mother before she married your father. Women are always totting up people’s relations.’

The fashion papers wrote of a world that anyone could enter who had conventional manners, a respectable record, and a sufficiency of money.

Possibly his father had never heard of the Radlington Club – the small social club of ‘the real people’ – the inner core – at Oxford... ‘How does one get into the Radlington?’ ‘Oh, I dunno! When you come “up”, somebody you know asks you if you’d like to be a member, and the other members know you, or your relations have told ’em to look out for you, and then the secretary sends you a chit.’ Without leaders, without tangible organization, without policy except the preservation of Britain, they held aloof from domestic politics, ignored elections, but subtly coiled themselves round Governments in being.
(The Department of Dead Ends, Roy Vickers)

Realising that henceforth I could no longer lay claim to the title of "young lady," but must consider myself only in the light of a "young person," I thought perhaps it would be better for me to remain in the hall, so I sat down on the hat-rack in orthodox servant-girl fashion. (Adventures of an American Girl in Victorian London, Elizabeth L. Banks She was a journalist who went undercover as a servant.)

Pamela Popham, square-jawed and resolute as a big game-huntress, stared round the room through her spectacles, drank three cocktails, said: ‘My God!’ twice, cut two or three of her friends, and stalked off to bed. (Decline and Fall, Evelyn Waugh Aristocrats can be as rude as they want to – they’ll never be socially excluded. And the girl who behaves like this is mysteriously more popular than the one who tries hard to be likeable.)

Not everyone can belong to a club catering to a certain social class. Not everyone can climb the social ladder. (George Simenon, Maigret at the Coroner’s Maigret visits America and wonders why there are so few bars, restaurants and cafés in an army town, and why the ones that exist are so empty and dreary. He learns, when he’s taken to one, that everyone belongs to a “club” that’s also a bar, a restaurant and perhaps a casino. You join the club that exists for people like yourself, and never have to mix with the others.)

Millions of Britons are not mixing with people from a different age or ethnicity to themselves. (Figures from Dec survey by social integration charity, The Challenge, quoted by Huffpost.)

In England it is bad manners to be clever. (George Mikes)

Once I heard that a local mother had smothered her kids’ faces in self-tan cream the night before the school photo to make them look “prettier”. My first thought was “Ugh! How common!” My second was: “I’d have killed for that.” (Carol Midgley)

Everybody is liberal... but when the mask slips, they're terrible snobs. (Hugo Rifkind on an American drama series)

Children ran free, in safety. They knew the seasons, from broad beans to mistletoe, the names of trees, wild flowers, what was edible and what wasn't. They knew every bird that flew, every fish in the sea, in the river. They lived off land and sea - a shop-bought cake was a blot on the character (although tinned pineapple was conceded as exotic birthday fare). (Playwright Pam Gems reminiscing about life between the wars. Typical middle-class romanticising about children foraging for their own food! And children hardly knew the name of “every bird and fish”.)

More here, and links to the rest.

Nasty Habits

The British upper middle classes think they are the best people in the country – in the world! But they have a few unappealing traits.

In the UK, the classes don’t mix much – which is probably why they are so suspicious of each other (benefit scroungers! toffs!). The top layers live in bubbles and only mingle with people from the right “background”.  Who said that these days the classes only mix on the race course? Is this why everyone loves Downton Abbey and Upstairs Downstairs – because you have all the classes in the same soap opera? (Apparently DA shows aristos and staff being fearfully matey with each other – which would never have happened. Employers treated servants as non-people.)

Middle-class Upwards and Weybridges like to say “illegitimi non carborundum!” (Don’t let the bastards grind you down). They think other people are grinding them down, not the other way round.
They are obsessed with queuing – they really don’t see why they should spend a nanosecond in any queue of any kind. Their blood pressure rises on the tube (people are going through the ticket barrier before meeee!!!!), on trains, and especially in supermarkets where they time the people in front – who can never find their money fast enough and then pay in small change!!! Other customers may even misuse the shopping divider. (They still can't quite believe they are shopping in the same place as other people to whom they have not been introduced. And there are so many of them. And they bring their uncontrollable children. Some childless Upwards think that children should be banned.)

The top layers of society loathe intrusive security at airports. To be patted down – touched! – by common people! And treated just like everybody else! It’s an outrage! Don’t they realise who we are? "Don’t you feel guilty passing through customs even though you’ve got nothing to declare?"

Do you respond when someone lets you cross the road? All you need to do is nod, smile or wave - but to a stranger???

Top people often don’t reply when shop staff chat to them. They don’t think of it as being rude. These are common people they don’t know – why should they speak to them? They like to say: “I hate being sold things.” The shop staff have probably been told to smile and chat (and also hover to see nobody nicks anything).

They like to say: “We can't live in fear.” They are very afraid of fear. We should just shut up about paedophiles because all this talk is making people too afraid. That’s why they flapped over Harriet Harman wearing a stab vest in Peckham, and when Jacqui Smith said she didn’t like walking alone late at night. We mustn’t say that our streets aren’t safe because it would make people afraid. “Being mugged in Spain yet again hit my wallet hard. But the real cost is in losing trust in people.” (The Guardian, May 5 08)

And people shouldn’t show weakness, or emotion in public. Yachtswoman Ellen McArthur is not a national heroine because she whinged all the time in public. And she’s had too much attention and besides she’s common. John Prescott talking about his bulimia is “self-pity disguised as honesty”. And he’s definitely common. And they despise Nick Clegg for saying sorry. He’s an “apologiser” now. (September, 2012)

They hate vacuous celebrities. They are afraid their children will be unduly influenced. These celebrities are celebrated for common achievements like pop music and football, or else they’re just “famous for being famous”. They want their children to see Olympic athletes as role models instead. Or is that just everybody else’s children?

But they adore rather plain middle-aged male actors like Ken Stott, Jim Broadbent and Ian Holm. (Such a mahvellous actor – and he could be me!) They don’t idolise really pretty people, and never go mad over actresses.

Thanks to Twitter and the always wonderful Middle-Class Handbook.

Classy Quotes Part Ten

She bought the home at a discount because the exterior was covered in pebbledash, unlike any other properties on the street. Now that it has been returned to the brick exterior the neighbourhood has breathed a collective sigh of relief. Times May 11, 2012

More than half of the current generation of young women, for instance, will choose a husband from their own social strata, according to figures last month from the Institute of Public Policy Research think-tank. Mail May 4, 2012

Throughout most of the movie the two leads go sight-seeing on the beach, at a rock quarry and other exciting locations. In between these adventures they talk endlessly about the environment, vegetarianism, fossil collecting, the duty of a proper citizen and proper diet, all things I want to see in a comedy. They bore anyone who will listen to them. imdb commenter on Nuts in May (1976) Ray and Candace-Marie are obviously Upwards.

We’ve kept the gym, the beauty salons, the bowling alley and the cinema. But we’ve only used the cinema once and I’ve never been in the pool. Petra Ecclestone, 23, Times April 2012

The 1950s were the end of the golden age of motoring. Suddenly the middle classes turned against cars… round about the time working class people could afford to drive. There’s a surprise. Simon Hoggart Guardian April 28 12

Chavs: the sort of people who live in two million pound houses with tar macadam'd drives, have neighbours and street lighting - just like the council house tenants they look down on upon. Commenter on Middle Class Handbook

Debrett’s latest guide to neighbourly etiquette draws a delicate but precise line when it suggests that neighbours should be invited only to “big parties” and “al fresco events”. In other words, you mustn’t allow them indoors by themselves and you shouldn’t know anyone who wouldn’t call a barbecue an al fresco event. Guardian March 2012

People from deprived areas visited both other deprived areas and prosperous areas … residents of better-off communities… tended to only visit other privileged neighbourhoods. New Scientist April 2012



Classy Quotes Part Nine.

Part Eight here.

More here, here, here, here and here. And here. And here.

The Teales

The Teales, Jen and Bryan, are the lower middles. They are sensible, reliable, hardworking and pragmatic and plan for the future. The girls work as estate agents or paralegals. The men work in computers, or in local banks. They wear new, clean, clothes and iron their teeshirts. They know how to polish shoes, and dispose of litter carefully. They live in a close full of “new-builds”.

They listen to Radio 2 and shop at Tesco and Safeway. They buy CDs of New Age tinkly harp music and classical crossover. They are Methodists or Evangelicals.

The Weybridges

Howard and Eileen Weybridge are the middle middles. They live in a 30s villa in Orpington (a London suburb) and Eileen buys her clothes at a local boutique. Their children are Paula and Gary.
They listen to Radio 4 and Classic FM and shop at Sainsbury’s. They like to go up to London and see an Andrew Lloyd Webber show. They buy CDs called Relaxing Moods. They play rugby, cricket and golf. They are CoE and vote Conservative. They think of themselves as officer class and don’t like to see NCOs (jobsworths) and lower ranks getting above themselves. They can’t understand why people sneer at Jane Austen, John Betjeman or Agatha Christie.
EM Forster’s novel Howards End is about an Upward marrying a Weybridge (he takes her on a date to a restaurant where they serve huge joints of meat - she takes him to a vegetarian eaterie).

The Upwards

The upper middles (represented by Gideon and Samantha Upward) are the smallest group, but we're always hearing from them because they work in the media or academia. They think they’re the most important — almost the only — people in the country.

Because they’ve never had huge amounts of money they have always valued cultural capital: education, taste, appreciation. Unlike the Stow-Crats, who have the confidence gained by titles, ancestral estates and a public school education, Upwards have to struggle all the time to keep their position on the class ladder, and remind themselves how much they matter.

They define themselves largely by what they are not. They don’t drink Nescafe or go to Alton Towers or have a French manicure. Mrs Upward (Samantha) is really sorry for those South Sea Islanders/Indian castes whose entire lives are hedged about with taboos.

They are self-righteous, and love being holier-than-thou about recycling (though recently – 2009 – some have started sneering at people who recycle as if it was a religious rite). They think buy-to-let investors deserve to go bust because they're just too greedy. They don’t like “consumerism” and “materialism”, but this really means “chavs buying chavvy things” – it’s all right for them to buy Boden clothes and Cath Kidston fabrics.

Though they're not rich, they're comfortably off. Despite this, they're sure they have "nooooo money!" and enjoy pinching the pennies. On holiday, they seek out deserted beaches so that their children can't spend money (on junk food and plastic tat).

They’re suspicious of enjoying anything for its own sake (blame their Protestant ancestors). They call fattening desserts “decadent”, as if sticky toffee pudding was the equivalent of a three-day Roman orgy. And lying on a sun lounger with a glass of white is “how very sybaritic!” The Romans probably despised the Sybarites for having too much fun.

They are the most snobbish group. They used to talk about people being “not quite quite” or NOCD (not our class dear), or more elaborately, NQOCMD (not quite our class, my dear). They are more circumspect these days and refer to “ordinary folk”, or condemn phenomena as “suburban”. Though a few years ago (2005) the broadsheets broke out in a rash of sneering about “chavs” - lumpenproletariat in Burberry baseball caps. Any manifestations Upwards don’t approve of are condemned as “common”, though they rarely use the word. It’s one of the many things of which they do not speak.

Their parish magazine is the Guardian – it supports socialism, peace, freedom, democracy and diversity and is by far the most snobbish upmarket newspaper. Samantha (Sam) and her friends had a wonderful time in the 80s pretending to be academics and writing articles about the semiotics of caravan parks and looking down on practically everybody for suffering from “bad faith” and falling for the capitalist plot that is popular culture. Apart from some major gains like the Equal Pay Act and the criminalization of rape within marriage, 80s feminists made little mark and lower middle class values prevailed. Now looks matter, you have to make the best of what you’ve got, and everybody aims for a job, a partner, children and a home instead of faffing about trying to raise anybody’s consciousness or change the world.

Upwards love the working classes - as long as they’re far away or long dead or in another country. They recreate Parisian workers’ bistros, but shun the local greasy spoon caff. Upwards call working class people “the local community” and patronise them within an inch of their lives.

Upwards listen to Radio 4 and 3 and shop at Waitrose. They recycle, watch nature programmes and news, visit museums, turn vegetarian, go to university, read the broadsheets, buy organic. They go to the opera (Samantha loves the costumes, spectacle and story) and the legitimate theatre. They secretly yearn to be famous, but for winning the Booker or presenting Grand Designs rather than going on Big Brother. They are CoE, Catholic or recent Quakers. They vote Labour, Liberal, Green and Monster Raving Loony.

Prof. Higgins said that an Englishman can’t open his mouth without making another Englishman despise him. Class hatred lives, but it’s the poor old Upwards who get it in the neck. “Posh” and “middle class” are terms of abuse constantly flung at the Upwards by people who mistake them for Stow Crats. If you want to sell a classic serial, you have to tie yourself in knots explaining that it’s not middle class really even if it is about people with servants who don’t have to work. Upwards bleat that their ancestors never personally ground the faces of the poor or sent any small children up chimneys or down mines, but nobody listens.

There’s a very bohemian member of the clan who has changed her name several times: Moonglow Gardenchild in the 60s, now Arkana Nightshade. Her garden is full of weeds (she says it’s a Flowery Mead). She grows plants that were used medicinally in medieval times. Her partner has built them an ecohouse on stilts. Her children are Autumn and Icicle (they rejected River, Summer and Leaf as overused) and would get bullied if they weren’t being home-schooled. As it is their friends call them the “Deadly” Nightshades. Arkana holds Gambian drumming workshops in the barn and gets all her furniture out of skips. The Nightshades trade in cool. They are really the worst snobs of all, moving into Hoxton and Brick Lane because “it’s the real London”, pushing up prices and replacing car-repair workshops with galleries flogging conceptual art. The French call them bobos - bourgeois bohemians. But as, somebody said, “Le bohemien, c’est une forme de bourgeois.”

Classy Quotes

England used to be famous for its class system. Then around 1970 people had the idea our society was now classless. A couple of decades later, John Major claimed "We are all middle class now." But the idea of class never went away, and research organisations like Acorn and Mosaic file us all in the right drawer.

Nobody can write about the English class system without acknowledging Jilly Cooper's Class, written in the early 70s. It's observant and funny and still relevant today.

Lynda Lee-Potter's Class Act: How to Beat the British Class System is not bad either (though it borrows a lot from Cooper).

So, has class gone away? Here are some opinions.

Some of [Prince] William's circle would even whisper "doors to manual" when Miss [Kate] Middleton arrived, in a jibe at her mother being a former airline stewardess. There were even worse social sins, such as using the word "toilet" not "lavatory", saying "pleased to meet you" rather than "how do you do?", and "pardon" rather than "what?". The Daily Telegraph, 2007 Mrs Middleton allegedly said "Pleased to meet you" when she met the Queen. But all these shibboleths are from Nancy Mitford's Noblesse Oblige, written just after World War II (now out of print), and it's highly unlikely that Mrs Middleton ever said any such thing.

“If Betjeman were writing today he would find plenty of class indicators. Where you go on holiday, for instance, or whether you use a camcorder at weddings.” Philip Howard, timesonline.co.uk

But, gosh, how powerfully the English upper middle classes, concentrated in one place, impinge. Like lemon barley, I prefer them diluted with a big jugful of the rest of England. So much calculated informality; so much just-less-than-overbearing command; so much slightly self-conscious good taste; so much discreet jockeying for social edge. Matthew Paris on the Scilly Isles, Times August 13, 2009

Sir, It is sad to see class being fingered, yet again, as the culprit for scholastic achievement or lack of it. It is the parental valuing of education, and the norms of self-discipline, hard work and deferred gratification in their offspring, which lead to achievement. These values are to be found in supportive families regardless of income, status or class. As one not born in Britain, I find it saddening to see our national obsession with class becoming, if anything, more virulent than when I arrived here 40 years ago. Mary Ring, Abergavenny Times May 27 2008

Increasingly, customs are climbing up the social ladder: ear-piercing and tattooing, obviously, but also barbecuing (and eating burgers generally, but only expensive ones), thrift shopping, holidaying in Britain, swearing, racking up unsustainable personal debt, having an allotment, cycling, going to football and voting labour. ... The emerging middle-class consensus on ear-piercing, incidentally, is the summer before secondary school – late enough to signal disapproval of working-class girls who have theirs done as toddlers, not so late as to be thought dangerously illiberal. ...the chief reason for the resurgence and resilience of headlice ... is the modern habit of hugging. That is, parents hugging their children, children hugging each other. ... Once again, we have the working class, notoriously sentimental with their kids, to thank for this development which, insect propagation aside, is surely a wonderful thing. Robert Crampton Times July 2, 2008

Just when we thought that all those pesky notions of class had been eradicated from British society... Pete Clark Evening Standard August 3, 2007

We in the middle-middle class are not going to set the world on fire. But we will be the ones running the inquiries into why there weren’t enough fire engines in the area after the conflagration occurs. We are conservatives with a small “c” who prize education above all ... We are big on respect: for people and institutions. We can roll our eyes at the royals but respect the institution of monarchy because the Queen has “done a good job” and we love the history. On Sundays you’ll find us at the Natural History Museum. It is a law if you are in the middle-middle class that you join the National Trust when you have children. We are very tolerant but advocate the death penalty for litter louts. We wince if we hear someone we know raising his voice in public. We are keen on debate (occasionally about subjects other than schools) but we like it to be round the dinner table. Anyone eating a TV dinner is immediately demoted one class. We buy quality newspapers, strip our floors and are quietly rather pleased with our lot. It is for others to use the word smug. Where’s the shame in any of that? I urge all the faux working classes to learn to embrace the middle way. Times Online March 27, 2007 Damian Whitworth

New Russians want to be old English toffs. Sam Wollaston Guardian Aug 8 09

Class is dead? People looking for a £400,000 house won’t want to live on a £250,000 street, no matter how big the house is. Property expert Phil Spencer

In the Leibenstein refinement of Veblen and the Steiner-Weiss corollary, “snobbery” and then “counter-snobbery” result; that is, those fearing democratization of consumption engage in display of exotic artifacts and esoteric knowledge that can only be appreciated by those who are literate in the cultural legacy of Western civilization, ie its art, literature, music and sculpture. Then, when democratization of cultural literacy encroaches on the practice of “snobbery,” the “snob” turns to “counter-snobbery” to demarcate and elongate the social distance between themselves and the encroachers. This “counter-snobbery” consists of reversion to a simpler and more austere life style which, of course, is visibly displayed for others to admire and emulate, although the display is no longer ostentatious but pretends to be self-effacing. Rick Tilman, ed Warren J. Samuels, The Founding of Institutional Economics: The Leisure Class and Sovereignty, Routledge 1998

The narcissism of minor differences. Sigmund Freud

My friends, the class war is over! Tony Blair

More here, and links to the rest.