What does 'effortlessly middle class' mean?

A snobby thing for someone to say. Makes them sound effortlessly stupid and annoying

When I was at uni someone said I was ‘so middle class’. I was quite offended at the time. Still not sure what they meant. Things are different here, more like the USA. Money is everything, makes you sick sometimes. Kings of the universe tend to be tradies, especially plumbers who seem to all be very wealthy. Also private school educated versus state school seems to be a bit of a factor here in Melbourne.

I seem to have started low, worked up to middle, then sunk without trace.
I'm becoming part of the underclass now.

No such thing you are what you are born, your children may be a different class to you. Someone can be born working class after educatio earning or marriage etc etc kids
can be middle

I don’t really know what effortlessly middle class means - but perhaps looking back at people’s family tree will indicate, that ancestors with centuries of education, who may hold professional jobs, who are successful merchants, or successful engineers, has led them to be described now as effortlessly middle class? They are the products of a hard working, educated, intelligent heritage.

Mummer. You are skating on very thin ice with your incorrect facts about Saint Monty Don. He is one of the good guys and one of the few things that the disparate opinions on GN agree on.

Pedwards

It wouldn’t be my description of Monty Don, class has nothing to do with it, he just seems like a lovely person

I agree. You wouldn't find Monty Don bitching about people as some have been doing about him.

We are exactly like the US. Money is the only thing that matters in the UK as well.

But class is a necessary prop for at least one of our political parties. And, as the programme I heard yesterday said, as a whole, the better educated people are, the more leftwing their politics.

It is, therefore, inevitable that for the chattering classes that work in the media who, however well educated, are not renowmed for being deep thinkers, that lazy cliches like the 'class system' provide a ready made cliche responses that they can tote around in the media, underpinning their sense of superiority with a belief that they really 'care' for those less adept at climbing the greasy pole than them.

Ronnie Barker in a sketch, serving afters to Lord and Lady :

Your nuts, Sir.

Your crackers, Madam.

Love it as they don't get it do they ?

Mummer, Monty Don avoided going bankrupt after his and his wife’s jewellery business collapsed as a result of the stock market crash in 1987.

Another fact you have completely wrong is that far from being ‘shunted off’, Toby Buckland hosted Gardeners World for a year but was so unpopular Monty Don was asked to return after leaving due to ill health.

Mummer

They don't do class in USA, in fact nobody but us brooms stuck up our backsides Brits insist in trying to keep the outdated and hilariously snobbish idea alive! In USA you're either rich....or not!

Hmm, I don’t know why they talk of ‘trailer trash’ then.

The liberal party is middle class. Some people who put things on here are so annoying, have no idea, I am not interested who is who just the silly comments that get me.

on R4 yesterday they were discussing voters, class, and political support.

It seems that 70% of the population consider themselves working class, up from around 50% in 1990.

70% must equate to most of the adult population, when you take into account children, the retired and all those who cannot work for any reason. So we are all working class now!

Liberal.

Condescending people. Snobbish, rude think they are better then you.

In my opinion Monty Don is not a sponger. He has grafted all his life. He worked as a bin man to pay his way through university and has barely stopped working since, despite a lifelong battle with depression.

Also, I believe he when the 1989 crash meant he lost his business he avoided bankruptcy by selling everything he owned and paying his debts.

I am definitely working class but very well educated. My partner's first cousin is a Marquess. His mother was 'aspirational', she would bathe and dress (long) for dinner at eight and thought me a 'common miner's daughter'. My father did work down the pit. Doing research into pneumoconiosis (black lung).
I refused to marry her son, even when pregnant. 'We've never had a bastard in the family before...'
After she died I discovered she and her mother escaped the 'poor house' in Glasgow to track down her errant father who had done a runner to South Africa.
I now refer to her (she was so rude to me and made my life a misery) as 'Gorbals Val'

Mummer

It's totally meaningless one may as well describe someone as" stringently walking out in their onesie class" ?! See? Meaningless! Don't pay notice to buffoons living in a fifties b&w Ealing film!

Nobody said anyone was taking any notice of any of it. Just a topic for chat!!

‘Effortlessly’ means without trying.
I thought nobody tried to be middle-class these days, partly because as someone else said, according to John Prescott, we’re all middle class now.
In my experience, far more people put effort into proclaiming how working class they are, when according to most class definitions, they are anything but.

#Don managed to SMARM his way!!!!

Monty Don is sponger class. A twicebankrupt managed to embark his way into gardener's world despite having nil qualifications for the job whilst the wonderfully knowledgeable and highly rated Toby Buckland was shunted off to a token 3rd rate show to make way for old big head!

MissAdventure

Class has nothing to do with anything really, only in the minds of people who think it does.

Would that that were true - but I think class driven connections open many doors / opportunities

BRAVA!

silverlining48

When first born I slept in a washing basket later graduating to a drawer, then a small cot which I had til I was 5 ( would have had it even longer had baby sibling not needed it). Toilet down the garden, Spiders galore, no bathroom, just a cold tap in scullery, tin bath on the wall....and not a silver spoon to be seen. Definitely working class.

Our families have ALWAYS worked in order to accumulate wealth, therefore we're all working class! Although I used to accumulate vast amounts via my work efforts, but still working class. That goes for everyone, and if your wealth is inherited, then your ancestors were thieves! Voilà!