How middle class are you?

[perrykneeham]

"ACCORDING to an etiquette expert, you can learn a lot about a person from their household items.

For example, owning a Dyson vacuum or a smart TV are sure signs that you're middle class - apparently."

www.thesun.co.uk/fabulous/9049578/etiquette-expert-owning-these-16-items-posh-hot-tub-smart-tv/

The bloke's an idiot. Hot tubs? Matching coasters?

[mids]

I've got a Dyson (great bloke etc) and a smart telly from the list. I'm probably middle class by education and profession and general outlook on life. I think it's more about a view of thee world than anything else. It seems a bit meaningless these days though. More blurred.

[perrykneeham]

Yeah. I've got a Dyson (which I hate) a BBQ, matching coasters and errr ... that's about it.

But, hot tubs? Hahaha! I don't know anyone who has one that I would think of as even vaguely middle class. One of the auto-electricians that used to work for me has a blow-up hot tub in his back yard. He has it rigged up so that he can walk in from work, strip in the kitchen and walk out bollock naked with a stiff drink every evening, all year round. He is a very funny bloke but it's hard enough to look at him when he's dressed. He told me that he routinely "rattles one out" in the tub when his girlfriend comes round. He's a bit older than me and, according to an uncharitable colleague, his girlfriend is hard to tell apart from a bloke.

[Deleted]

Dyson? Found one a few years back by a dustbin and discovered it worked, so kept it for a year or so, but wouldn't buy one on principle. Coasters? Might have an old record by them somewhere. Got rid of the Rayburn and now have a wood burning polyflam. Hot tub? Nah. Boiling hot water tap? Why? Barbecue? Stone built one we never use - don't like them or the types who gather round them talking bollocks, mainly how much their houses are worth. Mrs Ootlg doesn't do handbags; she carries a large soft leather jobby which holds everything. And personally, we don't mix much with the so-called middle class expats who I find in the main shallow and pretentious and overly class-conscious. But they seem to love us because we're organic farmers and have a Land Rover and Massey Ferguson tractor. Which all works fine until I get outside of a bottle or two of rouge at one of their aperos and reveal my true programming.

[mids]

Nothing more middle class than an organic farmer...

[Deleted]

I know. It's f**k**g awful. But we were forced into it by regs which insisted we were certified 'organic' before we could legitimately sell our produce as organic. EU rules I suppose (see - I'm not totally pro-EU).

[mids]

I always chuckle when I watch Countryfile, which I sometimes do. The BBC seems to imagine that the nation is fed by small organic farms and smallholdings with rare breeds of sheep and pigs, run by ex- advertising executives and web designers from London.

[mids]

"...so we bought this wonderful, little farm which we hope to have certified by the Soil Association next year."

[perrykneeham]

They had a honey sommelier on the radio this morning. I just stopped myself throwing a pan at it.

That Saturday morning slot on R4 with the Rev. Richard Coles makes me want to kick walls. It is distilled essence of smug cuntishness.

[Deleted]

And honey that's promoted as 'organic'..

The official organic movement's a rip-off all round. We pay €500pa for a certificate for our piddling 20ha while Glaxo or some other monstrous multinational pays €900pa (which is the maximum Ecocert charge) for a holding of 500ha. For this we get an annual visit by a controller who drinks our coffee while using our electricity for his/her computer/printer, who then wanders about the fields making remarks designed to display a technical knowledge entirely irrelevant to our situation. Meanwhile, the Glaxos wine and dine them and continue to force neighbouring smallholders out of business in order to acquire their land to get their snouts deeper in the EU organic subsidy trough. As an aside, HM Queenie's farms rake in plenty of EU subsidies, but they'll lose a lot of that after Brexit. So you want to hurt the Royal Family? - Vote Brexit. Good enough reason for me to change camps. Come on Nige, do your worst.

[wetkingcanute]

Radio 4 you say...a Dyson; matching coasters...

[perrykneeham]

In fairness, is having matching coasters that big a deal? You buy them (or are given them) in sets so, surely, it's actually more difficult to have ones which don't match. It's not that they're monogrammed or emblazoned with the family crest (a pasty rampant on a field of pasties couchant.)

[flatandy]

I am incredibly middle class. Not a proletarian nor aristocratic bone in my body.

Yet somehow I only have 5 of those items (coasters, bbq, Dyson, Smart TV and... a hot tub, which is an integral part of my swimming pool).

[perrykneeham]

Part of your pool is fair enough. Especially if you're in Calif. Weybridge, not so much.

[flatandy]

Yeah. California is different. Also, our middle class are mostly filling their pools in because they don't like paying Mexicans to clean them and because scarce water eco blah blah blah.

Anyway, hot tubs, smart TVs and BBQs are all really a bit chavvish, aren't they? I suspect that holding this opinion makes me more middle class than any products I own.

[perrykneeham]

I don't know anyone that doesn't own a BBQ.

[jimboky]

with CA's water problems I wouldn't think pools were allowed, do you use the #2 water to fill them?

had a pool in TN, don't now,,,,,,,,, have Roku on my tv, does that count as smart? do have BBQ, no hot tub, have a Kerby vac, I've had it for 30 years now,,

[voice]

Never had a Dyson, why would I when a Hoover does the same job at half the cost, do have a smart tv, was an incentive from Telus when we signed up for cable, have a bbq, but it would be weird not to these days, don't have any coasters though.

Though I've always felt working class by background, by lifestyle and how much I earn these days I'm certainly well above the average earner, living the middle class life

[Deleted]

We have slaves.

[Minge är en jävla besserwisser]

I have nothing on that list apart from matching coasters at a push.