What does "working class" mean?

you have to work for a living

middle class you live in constant anxiety and need to follow the rich even at the cost of high debts

rich you don't need to do anything

I generally agree, but they're not "obstacles" that other people don't face. Everyone has to start off motivating themself. If working class families don't have aspirational children, then that is directly and only the fault of their parents.
In the last few years, this country has filled up with people striving to succeed who were brought up in countries where aspiration, ambition and enterprise was actually illegal. The only excuse for the disgraceful lassitude of a lot of these people is the shower of half-brained left-wing sociologists, unionised teachers, and socialist public sector workers who seek to make victims of them in order to create a dependent client constituency for themselves.

Of course many people who we would surely think of as working class, did defer their ' pleasures'. They did long apprenticeships on poverty pay until they were 20 or so and were still at the mercy of factory closures etc. often affecting whole towns.

I worked for a while in an inner city Secondary School and was appalled by the way the parents of many of the children looked ; as if the cares of the world were on their shoulders: old before their time. They looked after their children however, There were no ragged children and they were all turned out well if with poorer quality clothes than richer children.

Families such as these are living on the edge all the time. They know that their jobs could end from one day to the next. They have little or no savings. They have, therefore no security when it comes to housing, children being moved from school to school as their tenancies come to an end. These children are anxious, fearful, maybe the principal carers for their mother/father with no help from anyone. Any request for money from the school or from an unexpected bill is a disaster. They possess very little. Maybe only one set of clothes for school and certainly no toys, books or expensive junk such as clutters every richer child's bedroom. Sports/ PE wear/ equipment are out of the question.

The 'unionised' teachers at the school were devoted to the school; giving up weekends, holidays,( unpaid of course) to take children out into the countryside, to theatres , clubs etc. buying enormous amount of books, equipment etc. out of their own pocket.

My mother came from such a background but being next to the youngest had financial help from her older sisters and went on to higher education. The older sisters had to take full time jobs at the first opportunity.

How lucky are those who are ignorant of such lives and can sleep sound at night.


Considering the huge problems they faced on a daily basis I am amazed at how well many of them have done but equally sad and angry that so many children could not break out of the nightmare which was their life.

OK. Well those are the correct statistics. And I used them in context to attack the idle. The data is incontrovertible. The location is irrelevant, you've obviously never hear of labour mobility. These people may not have been bothered to move to get a job, but twice as many other people moved much further for those opportunities. Now do you seriously want to read through four million job descriptions? Every one of those unemployed people was given at least 11 years of publicly funded education, and the free opportunity to access university education. Recent data shows that at a quarter of UK jobs can be done successfully by someone with a mental age of 12.

It's similar in the Welsh valleys - people are just trapped with no way out. Sure they own their own homes, but there's absoluteley no stable employment for them.

I suggest you stop discussing this. You are clearly ignorant and unaware of the world around you. You are making yourself look silly right now fam.

My sources were the BBC, the ONS, and the Guardian. Your sources appear to be only blind prejudice. Undoubtedly, you must be correct - the BBC, Guardian, ONS, consensus economic and political opinion and everyone else are ignorant and wrong.

middle class you live in constant anxiety and need to follow the rich even at the cost of high debts

Lol you just described Hyacinth Bucket

The statistics are not the issue here. The issue is that fact you are taking them out of context. The locations of these jobs is absolutely relevant, and to shrug that off is insane.

You are also pretending we are on a level playing field and environmental factors do not disrupt the education of a child growing up.

Try to understand different groups of people instead of judging them fam.

Sorry. Did you say the statistics (ie. the facts) are not the issue here?
The locations of the jobs is entirely irrelevant. Everyone else moves around for work. There is absolutely no defensible reason why the state should guarantee the livelihood of people who think they shouldn't have to travel or move for work.

I'm not pretending we're on a level playing field. I am pretending that the world's best health system, world's best police and first class education (in all cases according to the unions representing those professions) give everybody (able-bodied) enough of a chance and a good enough education to at least secure a job as complex as being a road sweeper. It's deliberate dishonesty to suggest otherwise.

These days its just a fashionable label to allow people to claim they are part of struggling herd before they head out to buy their exclusive shampoo from Lush and upgrade to the next Iphone. A bit like how half of the Occupy activists are champagne socialists who'd cry if they ever achieved their goal, they just like protesting.

For me I put aside job roles and have a simple model..

Underclass - Unemployed
Working class - Renter and below average wage.
Middle Class - Home owner and above average wage
Upper class - Ruling occupation (CEO, politician) or primary income from capital

I generally agree, but they're not "obstacles" that other people don't face. Everyone has to start off motivating themself. If working class families don't have aspirational children, then that is directly and only the fault of their parents.
In the last few years, this country has filled up with people striving to succeed who were brought up in countries where aspiration, ambition and enterprise was actually illegal. The only excuse for the disgraceful lassitude of a lot of these people is the shower of half-brained left-wing sociologists, unionised teachers, and socialist public sector workers who seek to make victims of them in order to create a dependent client constituency for themselves.