How do you define - working class, middle class, upper class?

working class - manual workers, unskilled jobs like cleaner or retail assistant, non-uni educated
middle class - teachers, lawyers, managers in companies, basically mostly uni educated people in white collar jobs or non-uni educated people who make the same kind of salary
upper class - aristocracy, or self made millionaires, or celebrity actors/singers/musicians, entertainment industry executives or footballers etc. basically people who only work out of hobby and dont have to work if they dont want to.

Wayne Rooney is upper-class?

Upper Class - I stand by you only reach that when you're the aristocracy you could be a billionaire but unless you come from the right blood or get titled you remain simply rich and not upper class and of course they must be British and maintain the old British traditions such as RP voice, manners and what not

.

Wayne Rooney is upper-class?

this is right, and see for example the snobbery directed at Carole Middleton. The British upper class isn't like the American: you are only born into it. David Beckham and Elton John belong to a global jetset, which is something distinct, and in Britain are working class (multi)millionaires.

It's because we don't have mobilty into the upper class, and because the working class is (proportionately) shrinking that in Britian class distinctions are most fine grained within the middle class.

Upper middle - both parents were privately educated, Great-grandfathers include a surgeon, a barrister, and a colonial administrator. A grandparent was born in e.g. China or India. There is 'land' in the family and a 'family college' at Oxford or Cambridge.

Middle middle - Parents in the professions: solicitor, architect, accountant. Grammar school products, one or both of them went to university, though no grandparent did. Read a broadsheet. Holiday in France or Italy. Going to Greece means Athens and not Kos. There are hardbacked books at home. The radio's tuned to R4.

Lower middle - Parents self-employed or in local government, the police or NHS management. Dad has a HND. Focus and a Fiesta on the crazy paving. Gas barbecue.The Mail on Sunday supplement, then off to the garden center. Sunday lunches at pub restaurants. You're the first to go to university: 'you'll be wanting to do a sandwich course for the experience, son'.

Working class - dad drives a bus, manages a shop, or is a sparks but not self-employed. Mum works at Debenhams. Nan and Gramps live within walking distance, it's walking distance even for them. Football on boxing day. Yours are the youngest parents dropping off in freshers' week: early 40s, most people's look ancient. Your mum comes to your graduation dressed as if for a wedding.

Where would you class someone whose parents are both barristers, both of whom went to state school and one of whom was previously a nurse and raised by a dirt poor auxillary nurse widower with three other children, who is a second university goer on both sides, who went to public school but was raised by a single parent in one of the worst areas of south London and who is not too distantly related to the Marquesses of Londonderry?

Where would you class someone whose parents are both barristers, both of whom went to state school and one of whom was previously a nurse and raised by a dirt poor auxillary nurse widower with three other children, who is a second university goer on both sides, who went to public school but was raised by a single parent in one of the worst areas of south London and who is not too distantly related to the Marquesses of Londonderry?

have you been reading Antonia Byatt again?

Well, exactly. There are plenty of others

Good lord, are there? And I hadn't meant that this is Byatt's background, just that it's only through reading her I meet people who work in jam factories but are related to the viceroy of India; her or - nasty habit - Iris Murdoch.

I'm lower middle class, mind, so it's a comparatively limited world for me.

Yes, I think it was clear from my post that I regard anyone who is a millionaire as upper class.

If I wanted to contrive relations with a big cheese I'd go for Birkenhead or Churchill, not an infamous appeaser of the Nazis. Still, believe what you like. We're all related to Charlemagne.

I'd never have had you down as a Mail reader, let alone a perpetrator of crazy paving.

I'd go by the 'classic' way as it were,
lower class - manual labour, poor, state sponsored those sort of criteria
Middle Class - White collar workers, home owners, disposable income anyone earning over £35k PA i'd say
Upper Class - I stand by you only reach that when you're the aristocracy you could be a billionaire but unless you come from the right blood or get titled you remain simply rich and not upper class and of course they must be British and maintain the old British traditions such as RP voice, manners and what not

working class - manual workers, unskilled jobs like cleaner or retail assistant, non-uni educated
middle class - teachers, lawyers, managers in companies, basically mostly uni educated people in white collar jobs or non-uni educated people who make the same kind of salary
upper class - aristocracy, or self made millionaires, or celebrity actors/singers/musicians, entertainment industry executives or footballers etc. basically people who only work out of hobby and dont have to work if they dont want to.