Class

You cannot buy class, although wealth and privilege do play a part. I am not talking about lottery winners here, or even people who have worked hard and earned every penny, but people who come from what was known as a "genteel" background : ie the Downton Abbey types of people who have inherited their homes and their wealth throughout generations of their families. Not all of these people still have the money to maintain these properties and have to resort to ways of funding the upkeep or closing down parts of of the property in order to keep costs down to a bare minimum.
They still try to maintain all the standards of this lifestyle often in very frugal ways. I still see these type of people as upper class even if they are poverty stricken. It comes with the life they are born into for better or worse.

Every country has a system of selection. This could be ancestors, hereditary, clans, tribes, cast, colour, money or position even geographical. I tend to agree with Elegran's definition of class or how we perceive it in this country.
What Grandma70s has said stands out for me as she mentions, upper middle, lower middle, middle class, middle middle & posh. I do not think I would want to try and define people to such a degree.

Oh dear, I can’t make up my mind whether I’m upper middle class or just plain, lowly even, middle class, as a retired teacher who feels bloody lucky to have had the opportunities for education that we (definitely working class) were offered in the 50s and 60s.
I’m extremely comfortably off, by standards, but always aware of how fortunate I am despite a pretty tough upbringing. I’m thankful to parents who strived for the best for us, supporting us in education.
I look down on nobody and certainly don’t look up to many, and those that I do look up to is not based on class, for sure.

I think there is a difference between being in a class (or not) and having class. Some people have class no matter their income, job or background. Having class is all about social awareness, how to respond in any situation. Its about treating others well and going through life giving rather than taking. The one's who have class light up a room, bring something to our lives and are a pleasure to know. They might not have two pennies to rub together but they will sport a button hole or a jazzy scarf and just have that....as the French would say....je ne sais quoi.

As a child in the 1930’s was classed as middle class because I went to private schools, father had car, nice house etc. When I was in the WAAF everyone was equal, one of my friends was a Scottish lairds daughter and another had been a London prostitute. When I married my mother said I married “beneath me” because my husband came from a poor family and had to leave school early to go to work.
Later living in a Hampshire village with “landed gentry” I treated them and their servants as equals. In fact the former ran up bills in the local shop and were behind with school fees etc. So money does not define “class”. We all come into the world the same way.

Just look at Katie Hopkins. She considers herself to be a class act, friend of the famous and influential etc.
To most right thinking people, she is the lowest of the low, a hateful fishwife with a psychotic personality.
There again, if excessive publicity gives you class, then she has it made!

Doesn't the fact that the op is worrying about class mean that they inclined to be judgmental? Aren't we all judgmental to some degree or another.

Well humptydumpty I have moved from the bottom to the top of that list through a long and highly successful career but still consider myself firmly “a working class boy” an honest days work for an honest days pay and proud to be a member of my union, but read the Telegraph and fully own my own house having paid off the mortgage years ago. I can, if I wish to show off, put 25 post nominal letters after my name but only have a Masters Degree (no first degree because when I left school working class lads from my town didn’t go to university - went in my middle forties part time evenings)

What class am I - who damn well cares in 2018 !

I have also been thinking since I heard the programme on the radio, have read the replies above and have the suggestion about what makes class - 'courtesy in dealing with others, even if this is difficult'. It shows that you are acknowledging their individuality as human beings, even though you might be obliged to express disapproval of what they are doing.

Bijou - I think the times around WW2 almost led to the end of class distinctions - everyone was in the same boat, deprived and anxious.
But soon after the old system started to re-emerge, although changed.
Good to see you're still with us.

"You can pay for school, but you can't buy class" is a cautionary message that is now seen on T-shirts and posters. A college degree from an elite institution can be bought with money. But it is one’s personal conduct that determines class.

It is not that the person of poor upbringing cannot earn a degree from an Oxbridge university, yet be denied access to an elite world due to a meager income. Rather, it is that a high income might bankroll a young man or woman to acquire an impressive degree. But bad behaviour and lack of character reveal someone who will never possess any ‘true class’.
In other words "you can't buy class" it is inherent !

Join my sociology or politics class (that I teach ) we spend a whole term discussing it.

I have 2 degrees and a Masters and my mother had a lesser Scottish Title, but I consider myself working class if any class at all. I'd like to think that we are all the same but all different or maybe I've missed the point?
As George Orwell wrote in Animal Farm, 'We are all equal but some are more equal than others'. But it's not for me I take people the way I find them and hope they do the same for me. A happy,healthy life is more important.

CLASS..!!!! Where are you from ...last century. ??? I'm better than no-one and no-one is better than me! I won't use people's made up titles( Sir, madam, ma'am, lord, highness , majesty ) or any upper crust crud! I won't bow to anybody or bend the knee. I treat all with respect and expect them to reciprocate. CLASS!!..... thankfully going the same way as religion!

I actually think your class when you are below age of 18 is defined by the occupation of your parents.. My dad worked in a factory so I was working class growing up. After 18 years old your own occupation is classed, as on Government Census. I became a teacher and married an accountant so became middle classed. Our children were middle classed also, eldest child degree, Masters and professional job so middle classed, 2 sons lorry drivers so working class. Not that it really matters much.

rude bad mannered people have no class.

if you work for a living - you are working class. Be proud of it.

So I've decided to be a lower, upper, middle, working aristocratic member of British society.

I guess I'm just average.

Anyone who even considers what class they, or anyone else may belong in, obviously has no class at all!

I had an explanation of Class when small. Was out walking with my Grampa, a woman walked towards us on the pavement, so smart, fur coat , hat, heels, not seen in a mining village, she stsrted to speak but we kept walking, little later another woman walked towards us, I only knew of her as Florrie x , she was black, wore a mans dai cap, had sacking around her waist for an apron, an old shawl around her shoulders, wore mens working boots, was pulling a wooden trolley, I knew she went up to the tips every day digging for small coal. My Grampa stepped to one side for her to pass, raised his cap, greeted her ‘good morning Mrs x’ she nodded and went her way. I was baffled, asked him ‘ why did you greet Florrie and raised your cap but didn’t for Mrs x. His reply because she is lady and worthy of respect from the entire village. Puzzling.

Florrie x had married a man from the village in the war, he came back to work in the pit, he had a serious accident which left him bed ridden, there was an attempt to claim , turned down , a fellow worker lied, the husband of she in the fur coat, women in the mining village didn’t have fur coats, this woman bought hers after Florrie’s husband had the accident. She collected small coal, cut and sold firewood, nursed her husband . I accept my Grampa’s opinion of Class.

Joanna Lumley has class.

Class....

All I can say is that some people have lots of class and others don't have any.... money has absolutely nothing to do with it.

I wonder why we seek to categorize ourselves.

My mum was a maid and my dad was a gamekeeper.

Under Harold Wilson’s government I left school at 14 with no quals to work as a paint sprayer and then a boy soldier before I became a sapper.

Nearly 50 years later I retired as a company director with a master’s degree (earned in 1983 under a TOPS grant).

My upward social mobility owed a lot to Maggie Thatcher’s government.

Found this - not sure how accurate it is but it's fun!

www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22000973

Magrithea, thanks - it was funny cuz it said:

“Result: the class group you most closely match is: Elite”

My wife disagrees of course.

Grampie - my husband's story is almost identical to yours
Without a degree, but a successful businessman.
He hated Thatcher though.