maybe Kosh

Its the bog standard marxist rhetoric and we can all think of a few Hyacinth Buckets

I've always struggled with class definitions TBH. I abhor them although I'm guilty of using them as convenient shorthand in discussions like this. I suppose my own distinctions are drawn more along lines of income than breeding/employment/ancestry. When people talk about the Middle Class I translate that as middle income earners - too well off to get any help and not rich enough to avoid money worries. I'm certainly in that bracket.

If I were to use more 'traditional' class definitions I'd have to say that IMO anyone who works for a living is 'working class'.

Quite true not even an OT.

Anyway they must all have short memories if they think things will be lovely under labour.

I hope the change in council doesn't f@ck up the siemens deal which still isn't finalised

absolute bollox, upper class maybe,

but middle class is well within the reach of hard working, originally working class people, and there is nothing wrong with aspiring to that,

why shouldn't working class parents aspire for their children to be middle class?

Are mcdonalds really paying people 25k to serve me burgers!!

Indeed. My voting strategy was purely locally focussed.

I didn't vote for the party that:

a) Were only waiting for this election to be over before entering into frenzied negotiations with the Allams;

b) Lied and stalled on the Boulevard development then pulled it in favour of yet another "state of the art" school. Regardless of the fact that a mere decade after Hull's previous attempt at a flagship school, Endeavor, finally coughed and died after never really spluttering into life. (Lesson for new councillors - it's not the buildings and facilities that count - it's what goes on inside.);

c) Toadied up to Hudge and co, negotiating a baffling deal to essentially act as guarantor for a £4.2M loan at a time when the council failed spectacularly to win hearts and minds by enforcing unprecedented cuts to jobs and services.

The stadium sale is my overriding concern. I trust that our new Labour governing body will stay true to it's original concept of the "people's stadium". But it's politicians we're dealing with here. At least the new leader is actually from Hull, though, and may "get it" more than the career-obsessed imports who thrust themselves upon us who were representative of the last few administrations.

Rubbish. You're born into a class, and you can't climb out of it. You may be successful and acquire money, but a pigs ear will never make a silk purse.

There are only 2 classes, anyway. The Upper aristos who don't have to work for a living and everyone else. Those, then, who do - the working class.

The "middle classes" are a fabrication of the first working class people who earned a bit of "new money" and then sought to distance themselves from those less fortunate. They imported vulgar words like "pardon" and "perfume" from the French because they thought it distanced themselves from the commoners who said "what" and "scent" little realising that the aristocrats preferred, and still do prefer, the old English way of talking. The middle classes brought snobbery and pretension to our society and are a scourge I would never aspire to.

A well known definition of a man who is not a gentleman to the Upper Classes is "someone who has to go out and buy his own silver - and then proceeds to call it cutlery". I.e., all of us.

Working class and proud, me.

Thats based on the flawed Marxist definitions of the class system;

namely the proletariat - working class who are exploited by the capitalists (upper class) in order to create profit.

Modern sociologists tend to classify the UK's population into 4 groups,

Underclass - namely people on benefits and non-working households

Working Class - the best definition for this is the american term of blue collar workers (semi-skilled), generally not university educated

Middle Class - white collar workers, generally university educated, and >£40k per household income

Upper Class - not requiring a job to live, large amounts of wealth, part of the old "social elite"

Whatever, mate. I'm basing it on what I've seen myself and heard about from my parents and grandparents in Britain. And using my common sense. And a read of Jilly Cooper's bible - Class. (Now there's an apposite and hilarious book, pmh.)

If you're moonlighting from your real-time (in your mind) job as an economist, into the world of philosophy, give it up now lad. You're making as big a dog's breakfast of that too

Sociology and Economics are 2 sides of the same coin really, but I am beginning to realise that rational thought is just not good enough when you have opinion to deal with,

I have a degree in economics and work as an econometrician, at least I think I do