Do we judge people by their class

I don't really think class matters to many people these days; my parents were definitely working class (mother's first job was as a domestic servant and father's a milkman) However they both studied at night school and got better jobs and saved up to buy their own home. Once they were property owners and had professional jobs they were regarded as middle class, though my father always said he worked, so he was working class.

Maybe socio-economic group is more relevant nowadays. We tend to mix with people like us because that is who we meet on a day to day basis. Our neighbours are broadly from the same sort of background as we are and probably are in a similar income bracket. We do have one friend who is titled (the daughter of an earl). She is very kind and you would never guess her background, so posh people aren't all bad

I am not sure who 'we' are, but I certainly don't. I judge people by their behaviour. One of the good things about living in France is that nobody tries to patronise me because I have a Northern accent.

They might if they thought your French accent was a Northern Ch'ti accent from Picardie!

Almost a carbon copy of my wedding arrangements jeni went from the ward to see vicar and he said I could not possibly be married in that church even though I had been baptised there and attended sunday school from 4 to 14 and was confirmed in the church. I walked away and was married in a totally unphotogenic redbrick church but the two priests could not have been nicer. A couple of years later the vicar from the first church left the parish with an apology in the church magazine, he wrote that he felt he was not popular with the congregation and realised that people were not attending his services because of his radical views. What a pity it took him so long to realise the error of his ways. The church was in a lovely middle class residential area and the vicar had decided that, as a nurse, I was not worthy.

I am pretty sure that every French person I meet can place my accent accurately as English!

I am so pleased with these posts I was afraid that most were quite upper class and I would get mullered for even mentioning class but I now know I am amongst ...simply Good People x x

Upper class??? cheelu - as if!

You ARE JOKING. Aren't you?

I think it's really a matter of how you feel about yourself. I'm from a working class background - dad a plumber, and my mum would do any work at all - from working in the fields, to cleaning. I don't have any problem with talking to anyone who I find interesting.

Some times it is not so much snobbery as the assumptions people make.

I am on a committee where all members are retired professional people. The male members tend to dress smart casual, as do the women, including me. DH does not do smart casual, in fact he is one of those people who does not look smart even when dressed up and his normal dress is black jeans and a sweat shirt/ T shirt.

Recently, for the first time, I hosted a committee meeting and chatting at the end of it one of the members asked me casually about DH's profession, other members showed an interest as well, the first time I had ever known pre-retirement occupations become a topic of conversation. I was thinking about this after the committee members left and it suddenly occurred to me that because DH is so casual in dress and appearance, people had made assumptions about the type of house we would live in and our standard of living. Faced with a gap between expectation and reality they were curious to discover the details of what he did to explain, what to them, was our unexpected affluence. No snobbery because the group never looked down on me or DH because of his rumpled appearance, but almost subliminally they made assumptions about what type of home we would own and how well off we were.

Upper class? Posh? cheelu?? Us - I don't think Hyacinth has posted for ages!

Yep, I agree, Flickety ..... and perhaps you were making assumptions about their assumptions. It's easily done.

nanaej said:

^Do as you would be done by! My mother brought me up to think this way, it was really her life motto.

I have prejudices that I work hard to challenge and I hope I mostly overcome.

I do get on with a wide range of people from different backgrounds but I cannot like racists or right wingers of any 'class'!^

These are my sentiments exactly, nanaej - they could well have been my words.

I brought my two sons up to never be snobby or racist, and to take people as they found them, not to make assumptions. One son was a final year university student, officer in the army reserves, and working weekends at the local meatworks to finance himself through university. At a party (yes, he made time for fun) he met a very pretty girl who asked him where he worked. He told her, the meatworks. She blanked him out and wandered off. A mutual friend asked why she didn't fancy him."He's only a factory worker", she said. When that friend told her the whole picture she tried to get back to David but he just laughed and walked away.

(At the meatworks they gave him a transfer to the laboratory when they found out he'd just got his BSc in biological science. The boss of the lab was a very beautiful Chinese/Australian girl. They have been together 5 years and get married later this year.)

Nice! blessings!

Greatnan Its just because they can't understand you. xx

Happy ending joan

my mum lived in a provincial northern town, her dad was a painter/decorator and she left school at 14. My dad was 'foreign' law student & did not know about the class system..so was happy to ask a beautiful girl out regardless of her background!

I was the daughter of a plumber and a stay at home mum but always believed I was a princess stolen from her cradle and they had just not got round to telling me yet

FlicketyB you and your OH sound ike my kind of people, you really do, You know my Dad wasnt one for fancy clothes but he loved cars and he bought himself a nearly new beautiful car and was about to get in it one day and was stopped by the police because they made an assumption, due to what he was wearing that he could not possibly own such a lovely car, we laughed so much when he told us......

On the first day of our holiday last year there was a very nice American who spent some time chatting with all the other members of our group who were from all over. I did the same as I found them all very interesting people. Later he cornered me and said "so you're a people collector too". I suppose he was right all people are interesting, different, un-pigeonholeable. (Except for the 'Royale Family' class)

Oh dear not the "my kind of people term again" I consider that expression as being very divisive indeed.

(Sorry posted too soon) It implies to me that lots of others are "not your sort of people." Which is snobbish and divisive!

Hey you know thats not what I meant, had to look that word up by the way(divisive) and it does not describe what I meant at all.....and being a snob means looking down at people and that is the absolute last word I would ever use to describe what I am like......

nanaej another similarity - my Dad was a spinner in a mill, and my Mum was a weaver, but was very different from the others. She was beautiful, well spoken and well educated: she had been sent to a boarding school after her Dad was killed in WW1, and then brought home at 16 when her Mum remarried.

Then the 1929 crash happened and everything changed. Mum ended up working in a West Yorkshire mill which was not easy with a posh accent. She tried to lose the poshness and sound like everyone else, but it never really managed it. Many thought her a snob, but not Dad: he asked her out and within a few short months they were married.

When DD1 was ay Oxford, she worked on the deli counter of their local Budgens. One day a woman came in with her 10/11 year old daughter, pointed at Sue and said, 'See, that's what you will end up doing if you don't work hard at school'

kitty