UKC

So the BBC has now worked out there are 7 classes within the UK today, the old system being 'outdated'.

A simple calculator tells you were you fit into this. I find it bizarre that they have re-classified the class system, yet the cultural tick box questions fail to mirror modern day living. e.g. do you go to the opera? Who does this anymore?! To be fair, they have asked whether you use facebook....

Anyone fit into the elite?

In reply to OwenF:

Why? After all, what constitutes the working class now that industry in our country has all but disappeared?


I have once or twice. I think the point, is that if you live on a sprawling inner city estate, you are less likely to go to the opera than if you live in a 5 bed out of town mansion.

In reply to OwenF:

Yet more evidence that the Beeb needs to go on a diet.

In reply to OwenF: elite apparently! Even though I never go to opera's, museums or galleries...

Utter tosh!

In reply to JIMBO:

Didn't see any boxes for insider dealing, starting illegal wars or buggering orphaned or disabled children so how do we define elite these days

In reply to OwenF:


Is it not a distillation of the original survey. In other words, presumably the questions used are based on a multivariate analysis of the original set to produce a new (smaller set) that captures most of the variation of the 1st.

In reply to andic: no box for climbing either...

In reply to OwenF:

Pippa Middleton? She has just challenged Boris Johnson to a game of Whiff-Whaff (table tennis).

In reply to JIMBO:

that's what I was thinking! Where is the 'climbing bum' class?!

Yes, no doubt the categories were based on a larger set in the original questionnaire but it seems to oversimplify and even potentially stereotype the classes.

Or maybe that's exactly what classes were, are and will always be - stereotypes. After all, do they really define who one is as an individual?

In reply to JIMBO:

presumably you just scored extra elite points for using the phrase 'utter tosh'?

The questions (sort of) make sense, but the interpretation doesn't. They're not so much "classes" as social groupings that will vary with time.

For example, 'older people' who as an average accept 'new' technology slower than the youth, will gradually move towards the groups including tech-savy online individuals.

Similarly, young intelligent well paid people will start in one group and then change as their savings vary. When I filled it in, I found that the amount I considered savings affected the the grouping a lot. If I consider only cash it puts me in one group, if I include investments I can't drawn on immediately it puts me in another. If I use the investments for their purpose, a few years early, then the house value changes a lot and I change group again. I don't see how those rather trivial things make that much difference.

Also, there are no questions about educational background. I know that who I have as close friends is very closely linked with the type of school and the university I went to.

I also think it's pretty insulting to the three jobs they associate with their new lowest class. I certainly wouldn't consider a cleaner to be the furthest removed from an "established middle class" - where would you put criminals, drug users, benefit cheats and politicians.

In reply to Philip:

I think accountants and lawyers is the "scum" group on the list of jobs.

In reply to OwenF:
I scored Elite, load of nonsense. I'm a college drop out who worked in an engineering factory up to to management level. My wife is a nurse.
I would have thought this would make us working/middle class.
I think that because I clicked on know a University Lecturer and an accountant (both members of my wife's family) that bumped me up to Elite.
I also clicked on listened to Hip Hop, thought this would have dragged me down a bit.

In reply to Philip:

Yes, agree. The most obvious one is that quite a high proportion of people in their generally middle-class groupings are going to move category over time as they get more senior and better paid jobs, move from renting to owning a house, put a bit of money aside etc. You wouldn't call this class mobility in a conventional sense, more variation with age within a class. The fact that the classes have different average ages underlines this.

I'd have thought that they could have worked around this by controlling for age in some manner, although I'm not sure how easy it'd be...

In reply to OwenF:

I never realised how elitist I was until I saw how some of my answers started stacking up but because I don't have a 30m2 flat in London worth £800k, I am apparently Precariat.

I humbly apologise for scarring this thread with my worthless presence.

In reply to OwenF:

Surprised there isn't another category for the underclass.

Also known as the 5.3million people of working age on out of work benefits out of a total working age population of 36,585,000

In reply to OwenF:

Hilarious. It's worked out that I'm 'traditional working class' ... when I suppose I'm about as conventional 'privileged middle class' (i.e public school educated, with blue collar workers, solicitors, army/airforce officers, art dealers and clergymen as ancestors) as you can possibly imagine. I suppose because I'm quite impecunious (though I have quite substantial savings ... at least to my mind ...) ... plus many of the boxes I ticked I wouldn't have thought would be ticked my many trad working class ...

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:

Have a play with it -
put income > £100k, pension/savings > £100k, house value >500k and you can't fail to be elite - complete bollocks (I was bored at work).

In reply to cander:

Really really really bored I guess.

In reply to cander: yeh - I don't understand the pension one... private pension pot of £100k is a piss pot if thats all you are going to have to retire on, yet ticking that box or de-ticking it makes a huge difference to where it categorises you. Whereas if I was on a final salary with bigger accumulated benefits I and most others probably woudln't even think about it never mind know what the cash value of it is. Huge difference between having a decent lump in a defined contribution scheme vs having 'real' investments just sitting around generating income and available to spend now if you want to. For example, my stock market investments in my name are about 2% of what I have in a Pension and my cash savings about 8% and much of that is earmarked for spending again in the medium term......

In reply to JIMBO: this means therefore that you're loaded and have loaded friends